China’s Surge of College Graduates Finds White-Collar Work Elusive

With the downturn in the global economy, Chinese university graduates face a number of unemployment woes. Among their disappointments are the short number of jobs available to them as well as the types of jobs available. Carol Huang of The Christian Science Monitor writes more on the “mismatch between expectations and realities”:

Don’t ask Meng Xiao to assemble laptops. The 2008 grad from Hebei Province hopes to design software one day. But like others in this tight job market, he’s lowering his sights.

“Let me first find a job, then talk preferences,” he said mildly at a depressing job fair last month. Young hopefuls milled about empty recruiting booths in a fluorescent-lit lobby. Only a few firms registered for the fair had showed up.

Hiring freezes are spreading: Some 65 percent of businesses in the Pearl River Delta, an economic hot spot, don’t plan to recruit graduates this year, a survey by the Kingfield Management headhunting service found last month.